DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- They celebrated together, just like they did last year. Kevin Harvick and Richard Childress back in Victory Lane at Daytona.

Last year, it was their only highlight in what became a dismal season. Questions arose on if Harvick would remain with Childress' team. Those questions persist with Harvick's contract expiring after this season.

Saturday night's Budweiser Shootout victory showed that Childress' team could be bouncing back, continuing a surge from the end of last season.

Whether that is good enough to keep Harvick remains to be seen.

"Bottom line is Richard Childress has given me a great opportunity to be a part of this sport and the last thing you want to do is throw mud in somebody's face and be disrespectful," Harvick said before the season began. "My main goal this year, no matter how it all turns out, is I don't want to be disrespectful to anybody. If it ends, I want it to end peacefully."

It's hard to imagine Harvick staying with Childress if last year's woes repeat.

While Harvick followed his Shootout win by finishing second in the Daytona 500, his results declined soon afterward.

The cars weren't fast most of the year, and crew changes also failed to improve the results quickly. Childress swapped the teams of Casey Mears and Harvick in the spring. Yet it wasn't only Harvick struggling. Clint Bowyer was as high as second in the points six races in and Jeff Burton reached sixth in the points by May, but all four Childress cars were out of the top 12 by late June, never to return.

Later in the year, Childress swapped crew chiefs and reorganized the team. He cut back from four to three cars for this season, losing Mears, after sponsor Jack Daniel's announced it would not return.

"We had a lot of things wrong," Childress said of last year.

Changes were made to the engineering department and new equipment purchased. That helped as the cars -- and results -- improved late last year. Burton finished the season with four consecutive top-10s finishes. Bowyer had four top-15 finishes and Harvick had two top-five finishes in the last three races.

Now can Childress' teams improve upon those runs?

"It's difficult because it's difficult to be successful in this sport," Burton said. "I'm not a big believer in momentum. I think that success creates momentum. Momentum doesn't create success."

Saturday was a good start, but how a team performs at Daytona does not indicate how it will do the rest of the season because the rules are so specialized at this track and Talladega. The past two Daytona 500 winners failed to make the Chase.

For now, Harvick will focus on the 500. He admits that the Shootout victory doesn't guarantee success later this week.

"I've been here enough times to know that this can be a funny week," he said after his Shootout win. "It can mess with you time after time. Hour by hour can bring something that's unexpected.

"These guys have been here enough, they know this place can knock you down as fast as it can pick you up. You've got to maintain an even keel and you've got to be able to keep that focus through Sunday, all the way through the race. Strange things happen."